Khan raised his arm to strike the black flower. Smoke filled his nose and choked his throat. Sweat coursed down his bared shoulders and streaked through the soot across his tensed chest and abdomen. Every fiber of muscle and sinew screamed with the terrible labor of his task.
He’d been at it for hours, until he could sense the shift of the sky from pale blue to the tangerine of sunset. His power grew deeper in the world of darkness, his senses more acute. Yet the flower, heated for the hundredth time in the forge and now dimming from white-yellow to rose red, could not be broken. kat-a-kat-a-kat: You made me too well.
“And I’ll unmake you, too.” Khan brought the hammer down on the most delicate, glowing turn of a petal.
Not one atom of the metal moved.
He lifted the hammer again, forced his strength and concentration into his grip so that his fist was black and smoking with Shadow, and struck the flower.
The bloom merely turned on its side with a soft clink, unharmed.
Why wasn’t this working? His cause was just as desperate as it had been before. More so, since Layla was so close. Why could he not damage the flower? Why could he not hold her once again? Why could Shadow not overcome, just this once, in all eternity?
A sense of unease filtered into his concentration. Khan turned to Custo, who still crouched, watchful, some way from the forge.
The unease grew to alarm, though Custo showed no outward sign of emotion.
“What has happened?” Khan asked. The boy had better not lie.
A pause, then Custo shrugged in resignation.
“An attack,” he said, “a few hours ago. Layla is safe, but others were killed. The devil, a woman, was not able to breach the compound, but she disappeared into the woods. Adam’s soldiers are tracking her.”
As a rule, the world pulled at Khan with myriad death tugs as souls readied for their passing. With a simple inner extension, he could divide himself into infinity to see to each. But he’d been ignoring them now for a while, refusing to meet the call of his duty, the cry of his scythe. An awful thought crept into his mind: What if one of those soul lights was Layla, and he ignored her death, and she crossed without him, to be lost and fed upon in Shadow?
Khan dropped the hammer on the anvil with a flick of his wrist. “I will see Layla now.”
Custo stood, glancing toward the opening, beyond which the other angels waited in expectation. “You’ve made no progress.”
“Some things take time.”
“You may be impervious to the voice of the gate, but humankind isn’t.” Custo scrubbed his scalp as if to affect his own brain. “We angels aren’t either. I can hear it in my head, and it’s saying all the right things. The gate demands to be opened. It will be if it’s not destroyed soon.”
“Then I suggest you watch over the gate carefully and resist as best you can. I’ll be back in the morning.”
Khan permitted no argument as his exhausted body evaporated into Shadow. He had to see Layla, had to make absolutely certain that she was well. Custo and his angels would have to wait.
Custo’s gaze followed him up to the dark stretch along the cavern ceiling. He called out bitterly, “I don’t want to hurt her!”
Custo wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He might have agreed to the task, might be searching for the resolve required to take an innocent life, but as of yet, he hadn’t found it. Right now the poor dog would guard the gate to Hell from harm even if he was struck down by his own kind.
Layla was waiting for Khan, anxiety riddling the air around her. Her hair waved freely, a little wet, to her shoulders, so she must have bathed. She had one of Kathleen’s larger paintings propped against a wall. She paced before it, biting a nail, then stopped to search the canvas. She reached her fingertips to touch the shifting trees of Twilight.
“Have a care,” Khan said, emerging from the darkest Shadow beneath the boughs. “One good push, and you may cross.”
“Oh, thank God you’re here. Why don’t I cross then, and we can talk like normal people?” Her tone was strong, words coming rapidly. Whatever had happened, she had resolved her fear and was ready to fight. “There’s a lot we have to talk about.”
He had to quash the stinging Yes! that rose in him. In Twilight he could appear however he wanted. Draw her close. Stroke that skin. But . . . “If you physically cross, bring your mind and body across the divide, you will soon go mad. We’ll have to speak like this.”
He would not compromise her mind, risk her spirit.
“I’m already going mad. Besides, you’ve brought me through a couple of times already.”
“Yes, but I brought you right out again as well. Without me, you would be trapped here. The fae will prey on you.” Moira would keep her under her skirts just like that other mortal woman. “Stay where you are. Visit me in dreams.”
It would have to be enough.